The Pirate Bay, one of the largest BitTorrent tracker websites, that allows peer-to-peer file sharing and is infamous to host torrent links to copyrighted content on users' computers, is in legal soup vide a verdict from a Swedish Court of law. The Court has convicted four men responsible for running the website after its founding anti-copyright group, Piratebyran gave up control. The four men, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of multiple counts of copyright infringement, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. A fine of around US $3.5 million was further issued, with each of the four having to pay around $905,000.

The verdict comes as a victory for record companies, that welcome it, despite the fine imposed not being anywhere close to the $17.5 million + damages, several groups of record companies were pushing for. Speaking in a video address hosted on the website, Peter Sunde described the verdict as "bizarre". "It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organized. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganized crime" he said. Speaking about the fine, he said "We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."

The damages collected would be paid to a number of companies that pressed charges in this case, that include Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.

This verdict has several legal, moral, and political angles to it. The activities of users on The Pirate Bay, by users sharing copyrighted content (music, videos, and software) have indeed been a nightmare for any record publishing house, though the copyrighted content is technically not stored on the website's servers, or hosted by it in any form. The website serves as a BitTorrent tracker, pointing users' computers to the content on other computers across the internet. The prosecution's contention has been throughout, that assisting in making copyright content available is an offense serious enough to be tried on, while the defense maintained that it would be an impractical charge when the website claims no responsibility for what users share, and that even the BitTorrent files the website hosts are created by users themselves.

The verdict has also sparked off political unrest in Sweden, where Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party, a political party that holds reforming laws around copyright and patents in the digital age as part of its manifesto, told BBC that the verdict was a "gross injustice". "This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure. There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it. Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament," he said.

The group expressed intentions to appeal against the verdict. "That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal... This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours." said Per Samuelson, lawyer for Carl Lundstrom.

I do believe they will wrangle out of this somehow. Or it will continue on for a very long time and neither side will win nor lose. Still, I find it a moral victory as pirating is bad, but then why should people pay extortionate prices for products that they can get for free via other means.
On the other hand I am thankful of The Pirate Bay and I do hope that they get out of this.

That would of been nice if they DID make their own little country for The Pirate Bay website and not get in trouble.

For crying out loud, No one is going to be able to stop file-sharing and pirating, NO ONE!! Shoot I download games and movies b/c at one time I did own the original disc and these merely served as a backup for when the discs came up missing(I had alot of theft in my old house lol).

Hmh. Well what do you expect. CDs cost a horrendous amount of money nowadays. Only natural that people want to find away around that. I pay for CDs when I want to support the musicians. Mostly local bands and such. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when some artits can't even walk upright anymore because of all the gold around their necks. I refuse to support such artists.

Same with movies. I buy movies I like very much, and I go to the cinema from time to time. But please, if a movie company invested 100 millions in a movie and earned 200 millions just with cinema displays, I feel kinda ripped off paying another friggin 30 bucks for a DVD.

Oh and games... I HAD to pirate HL2, Tropico 2 and Earth2160. The first because the disc is scratched, the second because it won't install anymore (whyever that is) and the third because I can't activate it via internet anymore and the activation hotline has been shut down.

Hmh. Well what do you expect. CDs cost a horrendous amount of money nowadays. Only natural that people want to find away around that. I pay for CDs when I want to support the musicians. Mostly local bands and such. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when some artits can't even walk upright anymore because of all the gold around their necks. I refuse to support such artists.

Same with movies. I buy movies I like very much, and I go to the cinema from time to time. But please, if a movie company invested 100 millions in a movie and earned 200 millions just with cinema displays, I feel kinda ripped off paying another friggin 30 bucks for a DVD.

Oh and games... I HAD to pirate HL2, Tropico 2 and Earth2160. The first because the disc is scratched, the second because it won't install anymore (whyever that is) and the third because I can't activate it via internet anymore and the activation hotline has been shut down.

My two cents. Glad the swiss law plays along until now.

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exactly! i have pirated many things because i bought it and it wouldn't install, disk is gone, file became corrupted, etc...which is really not stealing if you paid for the item in the first place.

I was just seeing on a different site that a movie where the tracker was hosted by pirate bay was getting people into trouble. People were commenting that Paramount had contacted their ISPs. I have a feeling the pirate bay won't be taken down, but I definitely won't download anything from there and haven't downloaded anything from there for a long time now.

Lets face it, these companies haven't shown proof that pirating is effecting their sales. If anything, profits are up and record setting (from what I've read various places.) What they see isn't how well they're doing, but how well they COULD be doing.

I just went out and bought The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas because I really liked it (after downloading it.) If I rented it, I would have done the same thing, but for every movie I like and buy, there are at least 3 stinkers I don't want to ever see again. Like Inkheart, man what a STINKER, PEEYEWWW.

What companies like Paramount don't want to admit is, the days of making sh*t movies where all the good scenes are in the previews are over because people can find out on their own for free (easily) that the movie sucks.

BTW, when the F is Wedding Crashers coming to blu-ray? Is anyone else with me when I say that's one of those movies I definitely gladly paid money for in the theater and then again on DVD?

I really don't have the money to buy stuff... and that's why I've stopped gaming
anyway... even though pirate bay is shut down... there are other means of downloading without it... most of the files are stored in rapidshare anyway...
so i don't really think this is a big deal to piracy...

I was just seeing on a different site that a movie where the tracker was hosted by pirate bay was getting people into trouble. People were commenting that Paramount had contacted their ISPs. I have a feeling the pirate bay won't be taken down, but I definitely won't download anything from there and haven't downloaded anything from there for a long time now.

Lets face it, these companies haven't shown proof that pirating is effecting their sales. If anything, profits are up and record setting (from what I've read various places.) What they see isn't how well they're doing, but how well they COULD be doing.

I just went out and bought The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas because I really liked it (after downloading it.) If I rented it, I would have done the same thing, but for every movie I like and buy, there are at least 3 stinkers I don't want to ever see again. Like Inkheart, man what a STINKER, PEEYEWWW.

What companies like Paramount don't want to admit is, the days of making sh*t movies where all the good scenes are in the previews are over because people can find out on their own for free (easily) that the movie sucks.

BTW, when the F is Wedding Crashers coming to blu-ray? Is anyone else with me when I say that's one of those movies I definitely gladly paid money for in the theater and then again on DVD?

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Not to mention that concert visits have risen significantly. Simply because you have simpler access to music and more people know about you.

I think this how thing is retarded, if the record companies and such were not stuck so far up themselves and living in the past they would realise they could distribute their own products for " free" and rely completely on advertising, imagine how much traffic a sony record free download shop would get, people would pay a shit load for banner ads!

And as for films, Films could be downloaded in a .exe format so they play 10 minutes of ads at the start just like at the cinema, if you don't want to watch you go have a coffee til the film starts.

So many ways to invest their money and ideas, and they just take down 4 guys instead. What is especially stupid is TPB has servers in Belgium and Russia too, and I'm sure more will spring up.

Good that their in jail.
Its their site, they own it and made it and SHOULD take responsibility.
If illegale stuff is on there, they should remove it.

BTW, what is the point of torrents anyway?
What legal purpose does it serve that you can not do in another way?

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How will you remove that, which is unremovable.

The point of torrents is providing a form of downloading large quantities of data with the ability to pause the download. Imagine Downloading 10gb of data the normal way, and your PC crashes. Well, start from the beginning. With torrents, you can pick up where you left. For example, german hardware magazine chip.de offers downloads of patches, freeware and demos via torrent, if they are large.

What software companies need to protect is their licenses. Microsoft for example is developing a model to protect their licenses, and they won't care if you download a piece of software cause your disc got destroyed. You paid for the license to use the software, not the software itself in a sense.

More companies should follow this.

As per movies and cds, why not cut down costs a bit. May get people more willing to purchase products.

i purchase media if i truely feel it deserves it. Like download first to try it out, and if i find myself listening to it time and time again i will go out and buy it. It's about time things moved away from CD's and DVD and became wholly digital.

Right, it would be nice if TPU could get their stories right.
First of all, no-one's in jail, although the sentence called for a 1 year prison term.
Three of the people behind the pirate bay doesn't even live in Sweden, so the chance is very slim that either of them will serve any actual time in jail.
They were found guilty to having aided copyright infringement crimes, rather than having committed any kind of copyright infringement on their own. Hence why the sentence is way too high to fit the crime.
Secondly, the damages due are US$3.5 million, not 4.5 unless TPU use some really old exchange rate.
Lastly, all of the defendants will be taking this to the next instance and there's another court above that one and after that it's the EU court if they really want to push their luck. Expect this to drag out another 4-5 years before any final judgement is passed.
On a side note, they were not ordered to shut down the site itself, which seems very odd if they've committed the crime they were charged with. Makes you wonder...

Given Peter Sunde's hostile-natured remarks, that just says to me he is guilty.

Anyways, just a hunch, it's not evidence, but I find people like this eventually get what they deserve. These internet sites are playing with fire, and when you do, you get burned.

Their juvenile attempt to act naive about what The Pirate Bay really circumvents, is pathetic. He acts all tough about not paying any fines, but he doesn't have the balls to admit what their website is really for.

Do we really think that if RapidShare got pinned for 'hosting' warez, that we'd let them off the hook because they didn't know?

Please... the majority of P2P should die, and hopefully places like Pirate Bay go down with it.

newconroer, you're either a very rich person that never have to worry about the cost of things.
Besides, torrent are useful for a wide range of legal things to, how do you think Blizzard updates WoW?
Even Intel is using torrents for some of its software.
The illegal aspects have nothing to do with torrents, news groups and ftp was used long before torrents existed and are still being used for illegal downloads.
And what happens when you scratch your favourite game disc or audio CD, do you go out and purchase a new copy? If you do, then you're really stupid.
Half of the stuff is being over priced, not because of the artists, film makers or even the game producers, but because of the publishers which charge a huge amount of money for publishing music, games and movies.
If torrents were adopted for legal downloads at a much more reasonable price than we pay today, then I'd be all for it.
Another gripe I have is why is it that American's can watch TV shows legally online, but just because I live in another part of the world, I'm not allowed to do so, as the advertising isn't target me... wtf?
The current system for content delivery is outdated and the money grabbers are fighting as hard as they can to keep it like that, as they're making big bucks on the back of it.
If you could download something in the same quality as it would be on a disc for less money, wouldn't this be a more sensible way to do things, as not only would you save money on it, but the environmental impact would also be lower as you wouldn't have to drive to the shop or have something delivered to you. There would be no need to manufacture physical media, packaging etc which would further reduce the environmental impact, nor would anything have to be shipped halfway across the planet just so you could enjoy the latest game, movie or music.
The Pirate Bay have most likely helped the environment, unknowingly, something that hasn't been taken into account at all.
Go on, I'm sure you have some good counter arguments here...